Parts of this article (those related to RFC 8200 and RFC 8201) need to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(July 2017)
Internet Protocol version 6
Communication protocol
IPv6 header
Abbreviation
IPv6
Purpose
Internetworking protocol
Developer(s)
Internet Engineering Task Force
Introduction
December 1995; 28 years ago (1995-12)
Based on
IPv4
OSI layer
Network layer
RFC(s)
2460, 8200
Internet protocol suite
Application layer
BGP
DHCP (v6)
DNS
FTP
HTTP (HTTP/3)
HTTPS
IMAP
IRC
LDAP
MGCP
MQTT
NNTP
NTP
OSPF
POP
PTP
ONC/RPC
RTP
RTSP
RIP
SIP
SMTP
SNMP
SSH
Telnet
TLS/SSL
XMPP
more...
Transport layer
TCP
UDP
DCCP
SCTP
RSVP
QUIC
more...
Internet layer
IP
v4
v6
ICMP (v6)
NDP
ECN
IGMP
IPsec
more...
Link layer
ARP
Tunnels
PPP
MAC
more...
v
t
e
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, and was intended to replace IPv4.[1] In December 1998, IPv6 became a Draft Standard for the IETF,[2] which subsequently ratified it as an Internet Standard on 14 July 2017.[3][4]
Devices on the Internet are assigned a unique IP address for identification and location definition. With the rapid growth of the Internet after commercialization in the 1990s, it became evident that far more addresses would be needed to connect devices than the IPv4 address space had available. By 1998, the IETF had formalized the successor protocol. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, theoretically allowing 2128, or approximately 3.4×1038 total addresses. The actual number is slightly smaller, as multiple ranges are reserved for special usage or completely excluded from general use. The two protocols are not designed to be interoperable, and thus direct communication between them is impossible, complicating the move to IPv6. However, several transition mechanisms have been devised to rectify this.
IPv6 provides other technical benefits in addition to a larger addressing space. In particular, it permits hierarchical address allocation methods that facilitate route aggregation across the Internet, and thus limit the expansion of routing tables. The use of multicast addressing is expanded and simplified, and provides additional optimization for the delivery of services. Device mobility, security, and configuration aspects have been considered in the design of the protocol.
IPv6 addresses are represented as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits each, separated by colons. The full representation may be shortened; for example, 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 becomes 2001:db8::8a2e:370:7334.
^"FAQs". New Zealand IPv6 Task Force. Archived from the original on 29 January 2019. Retrieved 26 October 2015.
^Cite error: The named reference rfc2460 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference rfc8200 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Siddiqui, Aftab (17 July 2017). "RFC 8200 – IPv6 Has Been Standardized". Internet Society. Archived from the original on 23 October 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification...
An Internet Protocol version 6 address (IPv6 address) is a numeric label that is used to identify and locate a network interface of a computer or a network...
mimics the real IPv6 header: The source address is the one in the IPv6 header. The destination address is the final destination; if the IPv6 packet does not...
The deployment of IPv6, the latest version of the Internet Protocol (IP), has been in progress since the mid-2000s. IPv6 was designed as the successor...
available IPv4 addresses, a new version of IP (IPv6), using 128 bits for the IP address, was standardized in 1998. IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s...
to this network, with 198.51.100.255 as the subnet broadcast address. The IPv6 address specification 2001:db8::/32 is a large address block with 296 addresses...
Message Protocol (ICMP) for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). ICMPv6 is an integral part of IPv6 and performs error reporting and diagnostic functions...
residential, office, and enterprise environments. Both the IPv4 and the IPv6 specifications define private IP address ranges. Most Internet service providers...
An IPv6 packet is the smallest message entity exchanged using Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). Packets consist of control information for addressing...
designates special usage or applications for various addresses or address blocks: IPv6 assigns special uses or applications for various IP addresses: Bogon filtering...
An IPv6 transition mechanism is a technology that facilitates the transitioning of the Internet from the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) infrastructure...
protocol of the Internet. Its successor is Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), which has been in increasing deployment on the public Internet since around...
technology that gives full IPv6 connectivity for IPv6-capable hosts that are on the IPv4 Internet but have no native connection to an IPv6 network. Unlike similar...
The Site Multihoming by IPv6 Intermediation (SHIM6) protocol is an Internet Layer defined in RFC 5533. The SHIM6 architecture defines failure detection...
There is considerably more concern with the use of IPv6 NAT, and many IPv6 architects believe IPv6 was intended to remove the need for NAT. An implementation...
different versions of IP are used in practice today: IPv4 and IPv6. The IPv6 header uses IPv6 addresses and thus offers a much bigger address space but is...
protocol of the Internet protocol suite used with Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). It operates at the internet layer of the Internet model, and is responsible...
in the field Protocol of the IPv4 header and the Next Header field of the IPv6 header. It is an identifier for the encapsulated protocol and determines...
layer (layer 3 for OSI) for Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) or Version 6 (IPv6) multicast. IPv4 multicast addresses are defined by the most-significant...
running Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), as well as version 6 (IPv6). The IPv6 version of the DHCP protocol is commonly called DHCPv6. The Reverse...
defined in IETF RFC 4721. Mobile IPv6, the IP mobility implementation for the next generation of the Internet Protocol, IPv6, is described in RFC 6275. The...
NAT64 is an IPv6 transition mechanism that facilitates communication between IPv6 and IPv4 hosts by using a form of network address translation (NAT)...
multihoming with multiple addresses may be used in IPv6. Provider Independent Address Space (PI) is available in IPv6. This technique has the advantage of working...
reasons for the development and deployment of its successor protocol, IPv6. IPv4 and IPv6 coexist on the Internet. The IP address space is managed globally...
architectural approach to fragmentation, are different between IPv4 and IPv6. RFC 791 describes the procedure for IP fragmentation, and transmission and...
ECN, Flags, Fragment Offset, TTL and Header Checksum. In IPv6, the AH protects most of the IPv6 base header, AH itself, non-mutable extension headers after...
version 6 (IPv6) hosts with IP addresses, IP prefixes, default route, local segment MTU, and other configuration data required to operate in an IPv6 network...
Global Information
